


My Strongest Suit

by freneticfloetry



Category: Revenge (TV)
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 14:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freneticfloetry/pseuds/freneticfloetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paired in power and pain, devotion and revenge, four queens play the hands they've been dealt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Strongest Suit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hauntedd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedd/gifts).



### Diamonds

She used to think it was enough to be beautiful.

It's the lesson her mother had always taught her. That this was her place, as a woman, as a daughter — to be wanted, a prize to be won. It's only after years of smiling, of slow, strategic seduction, that she realizes her mother had it wrong.

There's a power in money that few people know, the precious few with it who know all too well what life is like without. And while it certainly helps to look the part, there's nothing in the world being beautiful can get her that isn't made infinitely easier just by being a Grayson.

She looks at Charlotte now, created in her image, born into the power she always had to fight for. And beautiful, so beautiful, in her trust fund-fueled rage, hurling words of betrayal that make her mother proud. _Yes_ , she wants to say, _it's your name, not your face._

Ruthless, perhaps, this little life lesson, but a girl's got to learn sometime.

 

### Clubs

She's always been a daddy's girl.

It's no secret that Charlotte is the spitting image of her mother, in coloring, in stature, in every way the world can see. She's heard it all her life, in every variation possible — _such a striking resemblance_ and _it's just uncanny_ and _good lord, Victoria's finally found a way to clone herself._

She'd gone out to the gardens in her white Easter dress after the first time she can remember, played by the ponds in the holiday rain until mud stained the lace and splashed her Mary Janes. Her father had bundled her up and brought her inside and left her mother to explain away her appearance. And it turned into a war, over the years — action and reaction, cause and effect — until the day someone had called her "little Victoria," and she'd locked herself in the bathroom and hacked off her hair to the chin. Her father had plopped a Grayson Global baseball cap on her head and said he could put her to work.

Her mother had flown in a specialist to fix the mess she'd made. Within a month, half of Hollywood had the same cut.

She's spent her life seeing her mother's face in the mirror, and trying to be like her father in all the ways that matter most — honesty, integrity, genuine affection. Then the father she's always had turns out to be a lie in more ways than one, and the father she'd never known turns out to be a terrorist, and Charlotte's first and only instinct is self-preservation.

Maybe she is her mother's daughter, after all.

 

### Hearts

She honestly had loved to strip.

One of the girls she'd worked with had been a psych major, and sworn that they all had daddy issues. Which applied to everyone except Dr. Thong — tips were easier to get than loans, apparently, and you didn't have to pay them back in the end, but whatever helped her sleep at night.

Amanda doesn't have a daddy, and it's never been much of an issue. She'd spent half her life as an Emily and all of it in the system, and she knows exactly why she took her clothes off to the same bad songs every shift. After everything — having no home, losing her freedom, giving away her own damn name — her body's the only thing that's always been hers, and choosing exactly what to do with it was the only time it's ever felt like she was completely in control.

She's not in control now. Emily calls all the shots, Emily pulls all the strings, and Amanda plays along like a puppet, dancing someone else's steps, living someone else's life. She plays games in Emily's sandbox, she plays nice with Emily's sister, she plays house with Emily's long lost love.

Because Emily is hers too, even more than her own flesh and bone, and she'll take any piece of her that she can get.

 

### Spades

She's not sure how this will end.

The plan had been so clear in the beginning, back when Daniel was a patsy and Nolan was a pawn and Jack was just a thing of the past. When the only thing that mattered was avenging her father. It's been a long time coming, but of all the lessons she'd learned from Takeda, patience was the most important.

She's fought for this, she's trained for it. Given up everything, and it might not be enough.

Now Daniel's an ex and Nolan's an ally and Jack is an unforeseen complication. And all of that, she can handle. The real problem is Amanda. Has always been Amanda.

The identity was a means to an end. A clean name, a carefully-crafted history, a girl with no connection to David Clarke. The individual is a different story. Amanda predates the plan, the piece that doesn't fit, reminding her that her father had meant nothing to her once, that someone else — an adversary, a cellmate, a friend — had been, at one point, all she had in the world.

She'd never counted on having Amanda here, in the middle of it all; a daily reminder of her past life, her alter ego, the other side of the coin. And though the Emily she's become bears no resemblance to her namesake, the Amanda that followed her here is living the life she always should have, with her mother, with her sister, with her only living link to the person she'd been here way back when.

She's been digging holes since she came back to this place, one for each person responsible. Lining them up, watching them fall. Ever since Amanda blew into town, there's been an extra space at the end of the line, earmarked for Emily, wide open and waiting to swallow her whole. And for every blow she deals, every grave she digs — Lydia, Harmon, Kinglsey and Dr. Banks and Mason Treadwell — Amanda is there, forging a friendship with Charlotte, healing old wounds with Kara, building a life with Jack. Filling the hole, little by little.

When all is said and done, she'll still be Emily Thorne — rich, powerful, completely in control. Living the life of the charmed, while Amanda Clarke lives hers.

She wonders if she'll even have Amanda by then, or if she'll just be in over her head.

 


End file.
